1931 Ford Roadster Packs ARDUN V-8 Power

You could say that Bobby Hilton has reinvented the Model A Ford. His angry-looking A/V-8 coupes are seriously chopped and dropped, and they’re running vintage OHV V-8s (but not Chevys) with open headers. Hoods and fenders? Radials? Forget ’em. Big ’n’ little bias-plies, honey-finished interior wood, minimal chrome, and exceptional paint finish them off. Hilton’s hot rods ooze attitude. You can’t miss them—and they beg to be driven. Bobby and his clients think nothing of boogying from his shop in The Plains, Virginia, all the way to Austin for the Lonestar Round Up.

First time they did that, it rained like crazy, but all four of Hilton’s hoodless, fenderless coupes just hammered along. Nothing broke, and in Bobby’s words, “We flat had a ball, man.” An ex-drag racer whose wife Diane’s parents are famous drag racers Jim and Allison Lee, Bobby is down-home southern, through and through. His syrupy Virginia accent is sprinkled with jazz slang. He does most of the work on his cars himself, in a tiny shop that’s tucked away in a posh equestrian park. Don’t look for a fancy garage with matching tools. That’s not happening. Bobby has an artist’s keen eye for aesthetics, a drag racer’s can-do attitude, and the hands-on skills of a crew chief who knows how to do things right.

Bobby achieved national recognition when he built a chopped Model A coupe for Tony Lombardi of Ross Racing Engines, in Niles, Ohio. It was a Hilton-style car, for sure, but done with a bigger budget that permitted little more chrome and a lot better paint. Perched on Deuce ’rails, hoodless, and packing a 400-cid stroker Olds V-8 with a polished 4-71 blower, Lombardi’s Model A was selected as the Goodguys 2014 Hot Rod of the Year in Indianapolis.

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“That whole Goodguys thing was the best,” Bobby grins. “And I had never even been to a Goodguys event before.”

Ask Bobby Hilton how he defines one of his cars and the answer is immediate. “It’s got to look pissed off.” His cars don’t have hoods. They don’t have fenders. The big V-8 motors are souped to the gills, and very nicely detailed. They’ve got that 4-1/4-inch chop and that sneaky little sunvisor. They are Model As with an attitude.

“Maybe I painted myself into that corner with these Model As,” Bobby admits, “but right now, I think it’s a good corner. I like them slammed in the front, man. They have flat front crossmembers. Put them down on the ground in the back, make the wheels follow the wheel. Put 7.50s, 4.50s on old steel wheels, get a nice rake going. They’ve got to have a vintage motor, and I like to keep real Ford parts on them. I try not to use a lot of aftermarket stuff in the suspension.”

Bobby’s a good mechanic because he had to be one from the outset. “I was raised at a time in drag racing where you were damn lucky if you had a professionally built chassis. Later on, Woody Gilmore built some cars for us. But I was working on race cars when I was 13. We did it all, man, from A to Z.” And he still does.

“We’ve been building those cowl steering boxes ourselves, in-house. That’s a big part of the look. They are F-100 truck boxes. We’re modifying the sectors on ’em and creating a center steer box, similar to a Schroeder setup, but more true to hot rods instead of being a racing box. Every one of my cars has one. I put a center steering setup in my son Tyler’s car 10 years ago. It’s not brain science. It’s got a lot of racing background in it. Plus, it makes it damn simple to get the steering around these vintage motors. Typically, they have the starter on that left side; they’ve got some big filter or something else going on. You wouldn’t be able to get a steering column in them if you wanted to.”

For a guy who’s admittedly not an engineer, Bobby is an intuitive technician with some ingenious solutions that don’t break the bank and work really well.

A couple of years ago, Bobby told me, “If I had my grand plan of the world, I’d want to put a roadster of mine in the AMBR. I don’t have to win. I just want to get in line. I’ve wanted to build an East Coast, channeled-style roadster, with Tony’s motor and Travis’ paint. We could build such a cool car, man. Maybe do like an old-style 303 0lds with a LaSalle transmission and a chrome banjo … something to really make it pop. That AMBR thing is due for an East Coast–style car anyhow.”

So here we are … with just a few things changed.

Bobby Hilton’s AMBR contender, owned by Ray Enos, Sacramento, California, is a 1930-1931 Model A roadster with a Brookville steel body on a seriously Z’d 1932 Ford frame. It started with elegant renderings by Eric Black (eBDCo) in Portland. But take a closer look. This car will fool you. The body has been treated to what Bobby calls an “anti-section,” meaning a 1-1/2-inch strip of steel has been discretely added all around the lower perimeter. So the body now has more depth, like a 1932 Ford, but it still retains that classic upright Model A tight shape and early style stance. The 18-inch wheels perfectly follow the rear wheelwell’s radius. Bobby calls it “a wannabe Deuce,” adding, “when you put a Model A body on 1932 ’rails, it looks squatty. We released it, kinda raised it up for a little more girth.” You know something’s been changed here, and you like the proportions, but just what’s different is not immediately apparent.

About that engine … it’s not an Olds Rocket as Bobby once imagined, it’s a Ross Racing Engines–built 294-cid (3.315×4.25 inches) ARDUN V-8. The block and ARDUN heads are from Don Ferguson, famous for his modern reinterpretation of the classic Zora ARkus-DUNtov overhead valve cylinder heads. Tony Lombardi finished the block externally and performed all the internal machine work. There are custom billet pistons and a custom flat-tappet camshaft. That super trick finned Scintilla magneto is from an airplane engine that’s been converted to HEI. “We left the fan off,” Bobby says, “so you can see it, but it doesn’t overheat anyway.”

There are no mufflers, not even tailpipes, and the sleek four-into-one headers exit just before the doors. “It’s a hot rod, man,” Bobby says, “you don’t need mufflers.” The ARDUN makes a deep throaty racket, and it sounds like a Bonneville racer.

The fuel injection system, with its eight individual housings and tall chromed stacks, was adapted from a 331-cid Chrysler Hemi mechanical setup, and meticulously converted to EFI with high-pressure injectors, to run electronically. There are no visible fuel rails or anything modern. All the ports are matched. Tony Lombardi says it dyno’d at 322 bhp and 340 lb-ft of torque. That’s impressive from a naturally aspirated “flathead.” The polished powerplant features a Centerforce clutch and it’s backed by a T5 TREMEC five-speed gearbox. An open driveline leads to a polished Winters quick-change rear with 1940 Ford axle bells. “That’s all Classic hot rod stuff,” Bobby adds. The front wires are 17-inch 1933-1934 Ford steel spoke wheels. The rears are 18-inch 1932 Ford wires, widened in the back, with 5.25s and 7.00s for a decent rubber rake.

Other mechanical niceties include a 5-inch handbuilt dropped axle, Model A crossmembers, a 1933-1934 Ford-like center X-member, 1935-1936 Ford trailing arms, a custom V’d spreader bar, Bobby’s own design cross steering, Schroeder-style, with a custom draglink, tubular shocks (“those old-style lever shocks are terrible for long drives,” Hilton says, and he knows from experience), and buggy springs with reversed eyes, front and rear. The framerails are kicked up in the rear and notched to clear the front spring. The hydraulic drum brakes are early Lincoln style by Brian Bass (Bass Kustom) in Dallas.

Rare old Arrow accessory headlights with a discrete fin are mounted on vintage stands. The rectangular taillights are 1948 Kaiser, just to stay period but be a little different. The aluminum instrument panel, by Hartman Machines and polished by Jeff Smith, is old style with eight custom gauges from Classic Instruments. The steering wheel is a thin, four-spoke item from a 1948 Ford COE truck. I’d never seen one of these wheels before but it fits this car’s theme to a T.

The classy interior, by Mike Lippincott, aka Mikey Seats, is handcrafted of dark contrasting leather and there’s a subtle divider that makes quasi-buckets out of the bench. Bobby fabricated the aluminum transmission cover. The bare floor has polished wood panels. The door panels sport old-style door pulls and polished inserts (again by Jeff Smith), all tastefully done to a very high level.

Acclaimed painter and pinstriper, Travis “Tuki” Hess (Kolor by Tuki) from Bucky’s Ltd., in Martinsburg, West Virginia, was responsible for that Hershey chocolate finish. It was painstakingly rubbed out over the Christmas holiday. I visited Tuki, he’s a consummate perfectionist, when the freshly painted body was in his spray booth and he was seriously pressed for time. “I was supposed to get this in September,” he muses, “but we’ll get ’er done,” and he did. Tuki and John Shank were responsible for the bodywork; everything is as smooth as a baby’s bottom. The finish is flawless and the gleaming milk chocolate hue, Porsche Cockney Brown, contrasted with ebony black wheels and painted running gear, and very little plating is beautifully understated, like the subtle pinstriping and outlining by Jennifer Thomas. “It’s a simplistic car,” Hilton says, “and we built it to stay within the budget.”

Like many AMBR projects, work continued at a frenetic pace, right to the end. The Model A body and 1932 chassis, wired and plumbed, was trailered to Ross Racing Engines, in Niles, Ohio, near Youngstown, where they were mated with the freshly dyno’d and tuned ARDUN. Last-minute details were all accomplished over four sleepless nights and days, and they loaded up in a snowstorm for the Banzai Run West. Driving straight to Pomona through a blizzard, alternating drivers, so each one got a little sleep, they made it to the judges’ preview, in the nick of time.

An exhausted but exhilarated Bobby Hilton says, “Our goal was to get there. I’ve never been to this show before and I’m excited to be here.” The owner, Ray Enos, saw the car for the first time at the show, he likes classy cars and this was everything he wanted. “He trusted us completely to build it … and he loves it.”

The 2019 AMBR competition was very tough, but the Hilton Model A was definitely a contender. Approving spectators flocked around the roadster all weekend, many of them recognizing that something was very different about the shape of this car, but they were unable to articulate just what that was. … Says Bobby, “This car’s a Model A that wants to be a 1932 roadster.”

On Sunday, the AMBR winner was George Poteet’s spectacular 1936 Ford roadster, built by Eric Peratt and his talented crew at Pinkee’s Rod Shop, in Windsor, Colorado. That didn’t phase the Hilton gang one bit.

“We wanted to learn the ropes,” Bobby said, and we’ll be back next year.” “This is a simplistic car and it speaks for itself. The first time I’d put the clutch in was when we drove up to the judges’ stand. I thought I was out of my mind to just drop everything and do this, but it was worth it. We met a lot of great people and we proved we can compete at this level.”